Throughout the nineteenth century, physicists had a consensus that light

behaved like a wave, in large part thanks to the famous double slit experiment
performed by Thomas Young. Driven by the insights from the experiment, and
the wave properties it demonstrated, a century of physicists sought out the
medium through which light was waving, the luminous ether. Though the
experiment is most notable with light, the fact is that this sort of experiment can
be performed with any type of wave, such as water. For the moment, however,
we'll focus on the behavior of light.

What Was the Experiment?

In the early 1800s (1801 to 1805, depending on the source), Thomas Young
conducted his experiment. He allowed light to pass through a slit in a barrier so it
expanded out in wave fronts from that slit as a light source (under Huygens'
Principle). That light, in turn, passed through the pair of slits in another barrier
(carefully placed the right distance from the original slit). Each slit, in turn,
diffracted the light as if they were also individual sources of light. The light
impacted an observation screen. This is shown to the right.

What is Quantum Physics?

When a single slit was open, it merely impacted the observation screen with
greater intensity at the center and then faded as you moved away from the center.
There are two possible results of this experiment:

Particle interpretation: If light exists as particles, the intensity of both slits will
be the sum of the intensity from the individual slits.
Wave interpretation: If light exists as waves, the light waves will
have interference under the principle of superposition, creating bands of light
(constructive interference) and dark (destructive interference).

When the experiment was conducted, the light waves did indeed show these
interference patterns. A third image that you can view is a graph of the intensity
in terms of position, which matches with the predictions from interference.

Impact of Young's Experiment

At the time, this seemed to conclusively prove that light traveled in waves,
causing a revitalization in Huygen's wave theory of light, which included an
invisible medium, ether, through which the waves propagated. Several
experiments throughout the 1800s, most notably the famed Michelson-Morley
experiment, attempted to detect the ether or its effects directly.
They all failed and a century later, Einstein's work in the photoelectric effect and
relativity resulted in the ether no longer being necessary to explain the behavior
of light. Again a particle theory of light took dominance.

Expanding the Double Slit Experiment

Still, once the photon theory of light came about, saying the light moved only in
discrete quanta, the question became how these results were possible. Over the
years, physicists have taken this basic experiment and explored it in a number of
ways.

In the early 1900s, the question remained how light — which was now recognized
to travel in particle-like "bundles" of quantized energy, called photons, thanks to
Einstein's explanation of the photoelectric effect — could also exhibit the
behavior of waves. Certainly, a bunch of water atoms (particles) when acting
together form waves. Maybe this was something similar.

One Photon at a Time

It became possible to have a light source that was set up so that it emitted one
photon at a time. This would be, literally, like hurling microscopic ball bearings
through the slits. By setting up a screen that was sensitive enough to detect a
single photon, you could determine whether there were or were not interference
patterns in this case.

One way to do this is to have a sensitive film set up and run the experiment over a
period of time, then look at the film to see what the pattern of light on the screen
is. Just such an experiment was performed and, in fact, it matched Young's
version identically — alternating light and dark bands, seemingly resulting from
wave interference.

This result both confirms and bewilders the wave theory. In this case, photons are
being emitted individually. There is literally no way for wave interference to take
place because each photon can only go through a single slit at a time. But the
wave interference is observed. How is this possible? Well, the attempt to answer
that question has spawned many intriguing interpretations of quantum physics,
from the Copenhagen interpretation to the many-worlds interpretation.

It Gets Even Stranger

Now assume that you conduct the same experiment, with one change. You place a
detector that can tell whether or not the photon passes through a given slit. If we
know the photon passes through one slit, then it cannot pass through the other
slit to interfere with itself.

It turns out that when you add the detector, the bands disappear. You perform
the exact same experiment, but only add a simple measurement at an earlier
phase, and the result of the experiment changes drastically.

Something about the act of measuring which slit is used removed the wave
element completely. At this point, the photons acted exactly as we'd expect a
particle to behave. The very uncertainty in position is related, somehow, to the
manifestation of wave effects.

More Particles
Over the years, the experiment has been conducted in a number of different ways.
In 1961, Claus Jonsson performed the experiment with electrons, and
it conformed with Young's behavior, creating interference patterns on the
observation screen. Jonsson's version of the experiment was voted "the most
beautiful experiment" by Physics World readers in 2002.

In 1974, technology became able to perform the experiment by releasing a single

electron at a time. Again, the interference patterns showed up. But when a
detector is placed at the slit, the interference once again disappears. The
experiment was again performed in 1989 by a Japanese team that was able to use
much more refined equipment.

The experiment has been performed with photons, electrons, and atoms, and
each time the same result becomes obvious — something about measuring the
position of the particle at the slit removes the wave behavior. Many theories exist
to explain why, but so far much of it is still conjecture.

Interference takes place when waves interact with each other, while diffraction
takes place when a wave passes through an aperture. These interactions are
governed by the principle of superposition. Interference, diffraction, and the
principle of superposition are important concepts for understanding several
applications of waves.

Interference & the Principle of Superposition

When two waves interact, the principle of superposition says that the
resulting wave function is the sum of the two individual wave functions. This
phenomenon is generally described as interference.

Consider a case where water is dripping into a tub of water. If there's a single
drop hitting the water, it will create a circular wave of ripples across the water. If,
however, you were to begin dripping water at another point, it would also begin
making similar waves. At the points where those waves overlap, the resulting
wave would be the sum of the two earlier waves.

This holds only for situations where the wave function is linear, that is where it
depends on x and t only to the first power. Some situations, such as nonlinear
elastic behavior that doesn't obey Hooke's Law, would not fit this situation,
because it has a nonlinear wave equation. But for almost all waves that are dealt
with in physics, this situation holds true.

It might be obvious, but it's probably good to also be clear on this principle
involves waves of similar type. Obviously, waves of water will not interfere with
electromagnetic waves. Even among similar types of waves, the effect is generally
confined to waves of virtually (or exactly) the same wavelength. Most
experiments in involving interference assure that the waves are identical in these
respects.

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Constructive & Destructive Interference

The picture to the right shows two waves and, beneath them, how those two
waves are combined to show interference.

When the crests overlap, the superposition wave reaches a maximum height. This
height is the sum of their amplitudes (or twice their amplitude, in the case where
the initial waves have equal amplitude). The same happens when the troughs
overlap, creating a resultant trough that is the sum of the negative amplitudes.
This sort of interference is called constructive interference because it increases
the overall amplitude. Another non-animated example can be seen by clicking on
the picture and advancing to the second image.

Alternately, when the crest of a wave overlaps with the trough of another wave,
the waves cancel each other out to some degree. If the waves are symmetrical (i.e.
the same wave function, but shifted by a phase or half-wavelength), they will
cancel each other completely. This sort of interference is called destructive
interference and can be viewed in the graphic to the right or by clicking on that
image and advancing to another representation.

In the earlier case of ripples in a tub of water, you would, therefore, see some
points where the interference waves are larger than each of the individual waves,
and some points where the waves cancel each other out.

Diffraction
A special case of interference is known as diffraction and takes place when a wave
strikes the barrier of an aperture or edge. At the edge of the obstacle, a wave is cut
off, and it creates interference effects with the remaining portion of the
wavefronts. Since nearly all optical phenomena involve light passing through an
aperture of some kind - be it an eye, a sensor, a telescope, or whatever -
diffraction is taking place in almost all of them, although in most cases the effect
is negligible. Diffraction typically creates a "fuzzy" edge, although in some cases
(such as Young's double-slit experiment, described below) diffraction can cause
phenomena of interest in their own right.

Consequences & Applications

Interference is an intriguing concept and has some consequences that are worth
note, specifically in the area of light where such interference is relatively easy to
observe.

In Thomas Young's double-slit experiment, for example, the interference patterns

resulting from diffraction of the light "wave" make it so that you can shine a
uniform light and break it into a series of light and dark bands just by sending it
through two slits, which is certainly not what one would expect. Even more
surprising is that performing this experiment with particles, such as electrons,
results in similar wave-like properties. Any sort of wave exhibits this behavior,
with the proper set-up.

Perhaps the most fascinating application of interference is to create holograms.

This is done by reflecting a coherent light source, such as a laser, off of an object
onto a special film. The interference patterns created by the reflected light are
what result in the holographic image, which can be viewed when it is again placed
in the right sort of lighting.
When electrons pass through a double slit and strike a screen behind the slits, an
interference pattern of bright and dark bands is formed on the screen. This proves that
electrons act like waves, at least while they are propagating (traveling) through the slits and to
the screen.